Devonian Times Masthead

The DEVONtechnologies Blog

Articles in the category Tips

January 30, 2018

Keep Dropbox from Downloading Sync Data

Part of setting up a DEVONthink sync to Dropbox is making sure you don’t re-download the sync data unnecessarily. If you don’t exclude the DEVONthink Packet Sync folder in the Dropbox application on your Mac, it will download what our sync has just uploaded. This wastes bandwidth and space on your machine. It may also spam your machine with messages about files being changed. (more)

January 25, 2018

Switching Dropbox Accounts for Synchronization

You can only use one Dropbox account in DEVONthink or DEVONthink To Go. This means you need to pick an account to use for syncing. But perhaps you started with one account and have now decided to use another one. Or maybe you want to share sync data with someone else, using a common Dropbox account. And every single time you try and set up a sync location, DEVONthink just won’t forget the first account you used! Here’s how to switch the accounts… … (more)

January 9, 2018

Using DEVONthink with OmniFocus

In December we laid out how you can use DEVONthink To Go and OmniFocus together with universal item links. On the Mac this works, too, of course, and in a very similar fashion.

Recap: Item links are universal URLs that point to a document or group stored in DEVONthink or DEVONthink To Go. An item link that works on one device will also work on other devices as long as the database that the link is pointing to is available. (more)

November 21, 2017

Help Our Support with Screencaptures

When sending in support tickets, it is often very useful to attach screencaptures for us to look at. Sometimes the words you use aren’t the words we’d use and the real issue can be unclear. A screencapture is indeed worth 1,000 words, in many cases. (more)

October 31, 2017

Drag-and-Drop OCR in iOS 11

DEVONthink To Go does not have OCR(Optical Character Recognition)capabilities built-in. However, if you have an iOS device capable of running in split view mode (as of this writing: iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 4) and an iOS OCR application, you may* be able to do OCR now. (more)

September 19, 2017

Contacts in DEVONthink

One of the less noticed import options in DEVONthink is the ability to import contacts from your address book. There are three formats you can import in.

As an extra bonus, the VCard and linked contacts have active links in them. Hover over the word home before someone’s phone number and you’ll see it change. Click it and you’ll see options to call or send a message. (more)

September 5, 2017

Create Your Own Templates

DEVONthink comes with a variety of pre-built templates for various things, like taking a phone note, making an annotation file, or even creating a project. But what if you have a need but no template? You can easily create your own. (more)

August 29, 2017

Internal Metadata Backups

DEVONthink does not have a system for automatically backing up everything. DEVONthink has a setting in its Preferences > Backup that controls how many internal metadata backups are done. These backups can be used in a troubleshooting situation by selecting Tools > Restore Backup. (more)

August 22, 2017

Two For One Windows

Support tickets sometimes present new ideas. And sometimes they rekindle old ones from the back burner. I recently had a ticket from someone who wanted to open a document in two windows at once. So, about half an hour later, another custom AppleScript script was finished — one that would open the same document in two windows, placed side by side on the screen. (more)